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PUBLIC 


LEDGER 


SUNDAY  MORNING,  JANUARY  7,  1917 


MERCIFUL  ADVANTAGES  DUE 
TO  ANIMAL  EXPERIMENTATION 


Hitherto  Unpublished  Letter  From  Lord  Lister  to  Dr,  W.  W.  Keen 
Exclaiming  at  Attempts  to  Restrict  Medical  Research 


To  the  Editor  of  Public  Ledger: 

Sir — The  following  letter  was  found 
among  Lord  Lister's  papers  by  his  nephew, 
Sir  Rickman  J.  Godlee,  ex-president  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  England,  who  is 
about  to  publish  the  authorized  life  of  Lord 
Lister.  I  have  his  kind  permission  to  pub- 
lish the  letter.  It  is  a  signed  holograpn 
letter,  evidently  written  and  revised  with 
unusual  care,  for  there  are  many  changes 
and  corrections  in  it.  It  was  also  evi- 
dently copied,  for  "a  line  is  drawn  over 
it  as  it  was  copied,"  as  Sir  Rickman  in- 
forms me.  The  envelope  is  indorsed 
'•Rough  draft  of  a  letter  to  Doctor  Keen." 
No  copy  of  the  letter  ever  reached  me 
Presumably  it  went  astray  in  the  mail.  It 
is  of  especial  interest  as  showing  Lister's 
deep  convictions  and  personal  exparlence. 
W.   W.    KEEN. 

(COPY) 

12   Park  Crescent,   Portland  Place.   London. 
W.,   April   4,    1898. 

Sir — I  am  grieved  to  learn  that  there 
should  be  even  a  remote  chance  of  tlie  Leg- 
islature of  any  State  in  the  Union  passing 
a  bill  regulating  experiments  upon  animals. 
•  It  is  only  comparatively  recently  in  the 
world's  history  that  the  gross  darkness  of 
empiricism  has  given  place  to  more  and 
more  scientific  practice,  and  this  result  has 
been  mainly  due  to  experiments  upon  Living 
animals.  It  was  to  these  that  Harvey  was 
in  large  measure  indebted  for  the  funda- 
mental discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the 
blood,  and  the  great  American  triumph  of 
general  anesthesia  was  greatly  promoted 
by  them.  Advancing  knowledge  has  shown 
more  and  more  that  the  bodies  of  the  lower 
animals  are  essentially  similar  to  our  own 
in  their  intimate  structure  and  functions ; 
so  that  lessons  learned  from  them  may  be 
applied  to  human  pathology  and  treatment. 
If  we  neglect  to  avail  ourselves  of  this 
means  of  acquiring  acquaintance  with  the 
working  of  that  marvelously  complex  ma- 
chine, the  animal  body,  we  must  either  be 
content  to  remain  at  an  absolute  standstill 
or  return  to  the  fearful  haphazard  ways  of 
testing  new  remedies  upon  human  patients 
in  the  first  instance  which  prevailed  in  the 
dark  ages. 

Never  was  there  a  time  when  the  advan- 
tages that  may  accrue  to  man  from  in- 
vestigation on  the  lower  animals  were 
more  conspicuous  than  now.  The  enormous 
advances  that  have  been  made  in  our 
knowledge  of  the  nature  and  treatment  of 
diseases  of  Jate  years  have  been  essentially 
due  to  work  of  this  kind. 

The  importance  of  such  investigations 
was  fully  recognized  by  the  commissioners 
on  whose  report  the  act  of  Parliament  reg- 
ulating experiments  on  animals  in  this 
country  was  passed,  their  object  in  recom- 
mending legislation  being  only  to  prevent 
possible  abuse. 

In  reality,  as  one  of  the  commissioners, 
the  late  Mr.  Erichsen,  informed  me,  no 
single  instance  of  such  abuse  having  oc- 
curred in  the  British  Islands  had  been 
brought  before  them  at  the  time  when  I 
gave  my  evidence,  and  that  was  toward 
the  close  of  their  sittings. 

Yet,  in  obedience  to  a  popular  outcry, 
the  Government  of  the  day  passed  an  act 
which  went  much  farther  than  the  recom- 
mendation of  the  commissioners.  They  had 
advised  that  the  operation  of  the  law  should 
Lg_d  to  experiments  upon  warm- 
b"t  «SJen  the  bin  w^ 
of  Commons  a 
respected  as  a 
>rant  of  the  sub- 


ject-matter, suggested  that  "vertebrate" 
should  be  substituted  for  "warm-blooded," 
and  this  amendment  was  accepted  by  a 
majority   as   ignorant   as   himself. 

The  result  is  that,  incredibie  as  it  may 
seem,  any  one  would  now  be  liable  to  crimi- 
nal prosecution  in  this  country  who  should 
observe  the  circulation  of  the  blood  in  a 
fr.-g's  foot  under  the  microscope  without 
having  obtained  a  license  for  the  experi- 
ment and  unless  he  performed  it  in  a 
specially  licensed  place. 

It  can  readily  be  understood  that  such 
restrictions  must  seriously  interfere  with 
legitimate  researches. 

Indeed,  for  the  private  practitioner  they 
are  almost  prohibitive,  and  no  one  can  tell 
how  much  valuable  work  is  thus  prevented. 

My  own  first  investigations  of  any  im- 
portance were  a  study  of  the  process  of 
inflammation  in  the  transparent  web  of  the 
frog's  foot.  The  experiments  were  very 
numerous,  and  were  performed  at  all  hours 
of  the  day  at  my  own  house.  I  was  then 
a  young,  unknown  practitioner,  and  if  the 
present  law  had  been  in  existence  it  might 
have  Veen  difficult  for  me  to  obtain  the 
requisite  licenses  ;  even  if  I  had  got  them 
it  would  have  been  impossible  for  me  to 
have  gone  to  a  public  laboratory  to  work. 
Yet  without  these  early  researches,  which 
the  existing  law  would  have  prevented,  I 
could  not  have  found  my  way  among  the 
perplexing  difficulties  which  beset  me  in 
developing  the  antiseptic  system  of  treat- 
ment  in  surgery. 

In  the  course  of  my  antiseptic  work,  at 
a  later  period,  I  frequently  had  recourse  to 
experiments  on  animals.  One  of  these  oc- 
curs to  me  which  yielded  particularly  valu- 
able results,  but  which  I  certainly  should 
not  have  obtained  if  the  present  law  had 
been  in  force.  It  had  reference  to  the  be- 
havior of  a  thread  composed  of  animal  tis- 
sue applied  antiseptically  for  tying  an  ar- 
terial trunk.  I  had  prepared  a  ligature  of 
such  material  at  a  house  where  I  was  spend- 
ing a  few  days  at  a  distance  from  home  ; 
and  it  occurred  to  me  to  test  it  upon  the 
carotid  artery  of  a  calf.  Acting  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment,  I  procured  the  needful 
animal  at  a  neighboring  market ;  a  lay 
friend  gave  chloroform,  and  another  assisted 
at  the  operation.  Four  weeks  later  the 
calf  was  killed  and  its  neck  was  sent  to  me. 
On  my  dissecting  it,  the  beautiful  truth 
was  revealed  that  the  dead  material  of 
the  thread,  instead  of  being  thrown  off  by 
suppuration,  had  been  replaced  under  the 
new  aseptic  conditions  by  a  firm  ring  of 
living  fibrous  tissue,  the  old  dangers  of 
such  an  operation  being  completely  ob- 
viated. 

I  have  referred  thus  to  my  personal  ex- 
perience because  asked  to  do  so  ;  and  these 
pxamiiles  are  perhaps  sufficient  to  illustrate 
the  impediments  which  the  existing  law 
places  in  the  way  of  research  by  medical 
men  engaged  in  practice.  ..whose  ideas,  if 
developed,  would  often  be  the  most  fruitful 
in  beneficent   results. 

But  even  those  who  are  specialists  in 
psychology  or  pathology  and  have  ready 
access  to  research  laboratories  find  their 
work  seriously  hampered  by  the  necessity 
of  applying  for  licenses  for  all  investiga- 
tions and  the  difficulty  and  delay  often  en- 
countered  in  obtaining  them. 

Our    law    on    this    subject    should    never. 

have  been  passed  and  ought  to  be  repealed. 

It    serves    no    good    purpose   and    interferes 

seriously  with  inquiries  which  are  of  para- 

"                  "    -_"V?«";e  to  mankind. 
Believe  me,  ^ 

/  LISTER. 


W'STOR/CAL     COLLECTION! 


*>UKE  MED.  CENTER  LIB. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2012  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


http://www.archive.org/details/mercifuladvantagOOIist 


